


Not Divisible By Two

by hauntedjaeger (saellys)



Series: Heroes in the Sky [4]
Category: Firefly, Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, F/M, Multi, OT3, Staggered Timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-26
Updated: 2013-10-26
Packaged: 2017-12-30 12:26:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1018588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saellys/pseuds/hauntedjaeger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the main, being a Companion is a solitary existence. Vanessa has chosen the opposite of that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Divisible By Two

**Author's Note:**

> The _Jaeger_ is a ship full of ships that sail themselves. This is a story of _Pacific Rim_ characters in the _Firefly_ universe, so if you haven't watched the show it won't make any kind of sense. I also strongly encourage you to read the previous stories in the series.
> 
> Credit: reciting primes to keep from chasing the RABIT is lifted directly from ["Icarus" by starkraving](http://archiveofourown.org/works/919026), and the line "I haven't lost anything" was very heavily inspired by [windsweptfic's "After the Dawn"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/987123).

Doctor Hermann Gottlieb is thirty-three years old when he submits his first bid to the Guild. The video is accompanied by a profile, which the Guild secretary assembled after Gottlieb's interview. Vanessa Alleyne opens both files on separate monitors and reads while the video plays.

_Osiris-born and raised. Third of four children. Intense focus on research work, indicator of competitive nature._

"... increasingly isolated in the past few years. I have little interest in engaging with society. When I attempt to, the experience tends to be disappointing..."

_Degenerative nerve disease. Palsy-like symptoms, muscle spasms, chronic pain in right hip and leg. Hypermetropia._

"... ought to know the worst?"

"We want to know whatever you'd like to tell us, Doctor Gottlieb," says the secretary.

_Previous romantic history limited to university, before his diagnosis._

"... suppose what I want is recreation. That sounds coarse. What I mean to say is something informal, for a change. Not long-term, not necessarily."

"Are you amenable to a long-term contract?"

"If--er--yes, potentially."

"Do you have a gender preference?"

"Ah..."

Vanessa looks at the left monitor, watches Doctor Gottlieb's eyes.

"There's no wrong answer, Doctor Gottlieb."

"I have no idea," he says at last, and this vexes him, a question he's never needed to consider before, an x for which he cannot solve.

Charmed, Vanessa takes his contract.

* * *

Several weeks later, Hermann sits, half-dressed, on the edge of Vanessa's bed. "My condition," he begins, stops, tries again. "I ask only that you be gentle with me." He tries a smile.

Vanessa bends to kiss his neck. There is a trace of chalk dust beneath his ear. "I won't hurt you, Hermann. But I won't be gentle."

Hermann draws a deep, shaky breath, and leans back.

* * *

Several years later, Hermann brings a hard drive with an upgraded operating system to Raleigh Becket's shuttle on _Jaeger_ , and comes back to the Gottliebs' quarters an hour later, trying to solve a proof that exists only in his head. He sits next to Vanessa on edge of the bed. She knows full well what he saw. Silk hangings, original artwork, a few first editions, trinkets worth more than the whole ship. "Why would you..." he begins, stops, embarrassed at his accusing tone. He isn't trying to blame her, just himself.

Vanessa touches his face. It would take a long time to answer the question he can't ask, because she would have to start by telling Hermann what he is. Old money. Never lacked for a thing, until he turned fugitive.

She could have lived like Raleigh. She could have lived like the Becket brothers did in their glory days, given a few more years. But Vanessa had a life before the Madrassa; it isn't the only thing she's ever known. "I haven't lost anything," she tells Hermann.

Life on _Jaeger_ is better, in every way, than how she grew up. Life on _Jaeger_ is better, in many ways, than, well.

In the main, being a Companion is a solitary existence. Vanessa has chosen the opposite of that.

* * *

Doctor Newton Geiszler is thirty-five years old when he first gets into bed with the Gottliebs. Captain Pentecost offers them two of _Jaeger_ 's quarters when they retain the ship's services, but Vanessa graciously declines. _Jaeger_ is crowded as it is, and Newt suffers from nightmares: it would be best if he slept in their room. Tendo brings a cot.

They're not nightmares, Newt insists. He wakes up screaming because he chased the RABIT into someone else's memories. Someone else's head, someone else's life. Vanessa could write a profile for him, if he was submitting a bid to the Guild. _Hypersensitive to others' behavior--mirrors extensively. Night terrors involve extreme dissociation, bordering on fugue in worst episodes. Potential for touch therapy._

Gender preference? Hermann received letters from Newt, back before the Drift project, that recounted conversations with colleagues of various genders and seemed to have been in the context of romantic dalliances. So, who can say.

There are worlds where _Jaeger_ finds scraps of work, way out on the Rim, poorly terraformed worlds with sad clumps of trees in hard soil and air that tastes like tar. The colonists are fearful people. When those people address her as a whore, Vanessa finds it difficult to view them with compassion. When they try to burn Newt at the stake for the uncanny way he reads body language and the fact that he has no filter between his brain and his mouth, Vanessa finds it difficult not to recommend that _Jaeger_ bombard the place from the air.

It's a bad episode that night. Vanessa gets out of bed and does what she always does: sit Newt up, press her brow to his, put one arm around his shoulders, take his hand in hers. "Newt," she says, "look at your arms."

That usually brings him back. His tattoos have stories behind them, and they are unmistakably, physically his: an empirical reality he cannot deny. When that doesn't work, Vanessa does other things to remind him whose body he inhabits, things which are quite innocent by the standards of a Companion, but which would scandalize those same backwater witch-burning hicks. She puts his head on her chest so he can hear her heart beat, and places her hand inside his shirt so she can feel his--a closed circuit, regulating each other. She runs her other hand up his back and into his hair and over his scalp, back down again, slowly, over and over.

Once, she gets up in the night for a cup of water, and returns to their quarters to find Newt in the middle of an episode and Hermann attempting Vanessa's calming methods. She sits on the bed and watches Hermann rub Newt's back, say his name softly. It works--perhaps not as fast as it works when Vanessa does it--and as Hermann gets back into bed, Newt is the one with a flicker of embarrassment on his face.

But on the night of the angry mob, nothing works. Newt shakes and mutters, right leg bouncing, regardless of how tightly Vanessa holds him. Finally she lets him go and leans over Hermann. "I think he needs--"

Hermann is already moving over, turning on his side up against the bulkhead. How many times has he snapped at Newt during the day cycle as they work on their project, shouted, slipped into German to fully express his ire in harsh compound words? Is this a contradiction?

Vanessa eases Newt down next to him, then balances herself at the edge of the narrow bed. She has no fear of slipping off in her sleep; a Companion's kinesthetic sense is refined by training, which is to say Vanessa can fall asleep anywhere, in any position. She presses herself to Newt's right side from shoulder to ankle, the curve of her belly against his waist.

"With me, Newton," Hermann says. "Two. Three. Five."

"Seven," they say together to the dark. "Eleven. Thirteen. Seventeen." Vanessa feels Newt relax. By "One thousand three hundred and ninety-nine," he's asleep.

The next morning Hermann moves stiffly, and tries to hide his winces from her. Vanessa learned early in their relationship to recognize when Hermann did not want to be touched, though he never said anything to that effect, and then she drew the connection to high pain days. She scrounges some bits and pieces, worn-out cargo padding, a bolt of wool Raleigh doesn't need. She pulls the heating element from a survival blanket, and Newt helps her construct a buffer and hang it against the bulkhead. They adjust the level so it won't be overpowering, just enough to cancel out the sapping cold of the metal against Hermann's hip and leg and reflect his body heat back to him.

There is no discussion about whether Newt will be joining them again. Hermann eyes the buffer, gets on the bed to try it out, makes a small "hmph" of satisfaction. As she folds up the cot, Vanessa mentally redacts the line in his profile about a competitive nature.

* * *

There are precious few configurations in this 'verse that Vanessa did not encounter at the Companion house, between the instructors' demonstrations and the experiments which they encouraged trainees to conduct during free hours. A Companion is meant to be amenable to and competent in all things, the sort of person for whom a client profile would be impossible, not to mention unnecessary, but Vanessa has never had any doubt about her gender preference. Many is the time she watched boys kiss boys, and do more than that. She enjoyed it in a way she enjoyed little else at the Madrassa.

So when she wakes up to see Newt placing little kisses all over Hermann's jaw and neck, she isn't sure which of them is dreaming. Hermann's eyes are closed, but he can't sleep through such things. Newt could be Drift-sick, but he's not shaking, seems to be in full control of himself. Vanessa… Vanessa might be dreaming.

"Vanessa," Newt says, sensing her gaze, or maybe the change in her heartbeat. "Is this okay?"

Hermann's eyes open. The curiosity in them is un-scientific.

As if he needs her permission, as if either of them have a claim to each other. She remembers the ring on her finger, one of a pair purchased after a long haggling process in a market on Ezra. Is this a contradiction?

"Yes," she says, thankful for the training to keep her voice steady in any situation.

“Shiny,” Newt says, and alternates his kisses with dabs of his tongue. Vanessa reaches across Newt to ease down the waistband of Hermann’s sleep pants. Newt’s hand follows hers. She guides him, but Newt is a quick study, is already matching her grip and rhythm. Vanessa moves her hand to Newt and uses an entirely different combination of movements, and he turns his head to kiss her, stubble rough against her lips, and Hermann lets out a voiced sigh.

Later Vanessa has her chest pressed to Newt’s back, her arm under his head so she can touch Hermann’s face. Somewhere in the ‘verse there must be a profile on her, with all the information the Guild used to forward her bids. She tries to imagine what it might say.

_Proficiencies in dance and mathematics. Autodidact. Ease with abstract concepts, high adaptability. Displays resistance to comforts of the Companion house, but is unlikely to offend client(s) by refusing gifts. Propensity for extended contracts, be they consecutive evenings or multiple sessions._

Straight out of the Madrassa they urged her to take long-term clients. They wanted her to diversify, to be all things to all people, for as long as they needed her. Is this a contradiction?

* * *

“One day,” Vanessa’s favorite instructor tells her in confidence, “the sweetness in your face won’t be enough anymore. I give it five years, darling, and then it’s not that you won’t be beautiful, but the novelty will have worn off. You’ll have to work twice as hard then. You understand what I’m trying to say? This is fleeting--you need to enjoy it. Build a nice life for yourself in the meantime.”

* * *

“One day,” Hermann tells her in their cabin on the Kaidanovskys’ ship, two weeks after they left Osiris, “my legs will cease working entirely. My hands will go next; I won’t be able to feed myself or write. After that will be speech.”

Vanessa waits in silence beside him for a long time, fighting the Companion’s instinct to tell him what he wants to hear. Finally she touches his lips. “Marry me,” she says.

* * *

“I love you guys,” Newt says quietly, half-asleep. Vanessa kisses the tattoo on his shoulder.

“Yes, you’ve made that very clear,” Hermann replies. There is no bite in his tone, only fondness.

Whatever she could have had, Vanessa has chosen the opposite.


End file.
